How Barking Collars Really Feel?

Have you seen the film, ‘Fun with Dick and Jane’ where a barking dog collar is placed on the family dog? The lead character played by Jim Carrey also tests the barking dog collar on himself and later puts it on one of his robbery victims. It was very funny.

A bark control collar will give a mild static pulse to the dog as it detects the vibration of the dog’s vocal cords when it barks.  Read more about how they work here.

We have 2 static correction models. The Static Collar  and the Sonic Collar and as well as one Citronella spray model available.

This leads me to discuss how a dog could react to his first experience of a bark control collar. It’s also interesting to think about what an owner can expect as time goes on and the dog becomes trained by the collar. The first point that I appreciate from the film is that Jim Carrey mentions the collar is recommended by a trainer. It is important to get information from a specialist in this area. You can then be guided in choosing the correct bark collar for your dog and more importantly take advantage of the after sales experience that a specialist can provide. Buy from someone who only sells this type of equipment.

In the film, the dog’s first reaction was probably quite realistic. A dog may never have felt a static pulse before. Dogs can’t rub their shoes on the carpet and then touch a door handle in order to find out what a bit of static feels like. So their first experience of a ‘static correction’ will probably be a bit of a surprise.

As an example, let’s say that your family, who loved you dearly, decided that salt was bad for you. However, you speak an entirely different language. Despite having tried to train you on many occasions not to have salt, they decided that they needed further help. They then put a contraption on you so that each time you reached for the salt it flicked you behind the ear with a rubber band. The first time you felt this you would get quite a surprise. Within a short period of time and with a bit of added training for the family you would work out that it was the salt. You would then adjust your behavior in order to avoid a flick from the rubber band. We call this avoidance training.

After this if your family was consistent you would gradually loose the habit of reaching for the salt. Just as you would expect a dog to quickly readjust the way it behaves in relation to barking. You may then be able to leave the bark collar off for periods of time and only use it if the barking gets back to unacceptable levels. I noticed with our dog, Spud that he did not bark when his bark collar was put back on and so never got a correction. He knew what we were trying to tell him.